I don’t know if Husam Dwayat was aware of the symbolism in his choice of weapon when he murdered three Israelis and injured scores more in Jerusalem yesterday.

The front-loader with which Dwayat rammed several cars and buses before he was shot dead was a Caterpillar. Palestinian sympathizers and human rights organizations, including Human Rights Watch, have for several years been waging a campaign against the US construction equipment maker, on the grounds that it builds bulldozers which are used by the Israeli Defense Forces to demolish Palestinian homes.

Israel has a policy of destroying the houses of suicide bombers and other terrorists as a deterrent, reasoning that even if a would-be martyr cares nothing for his own life, he might think twice about causing his family to be made homeless. It also uses earthmovers to demolish buildings used by terrorists as firing positions, to destroy booby-traps and to fill in tunnels used for smuggling weapons — although you wouldn’t learn any of that from the New York Times‘ report on yesterday’s attack:

Caterpillar equipment has a special resonance among Palestinians. Human rights activists have lobbied the company to stop selling its heavy vehicles to the Israeli military out of concern that they have been used to demolish Palestinian homes, uproot orchards and construct Jewish settlements in occupied land.

Ah the orchards! What a masterstroke of evocation. Forget about the sniper nests and the tunnels used by terrorists to smuggle in their rockets and to kidnap and kill Israeli soldiers: think about the orange growers.

If you think that paragraph, which comes at the end of the report (which was buried at the bottom of the front page of the Times‘ website), has the faint whiff of justification about it, then what about this, which comes less than 100 words into the story, and before the writer even bothers to note that two of the dead identified at that point were women:

The police said that they were treating the incident as a terrorist attack and that the driver, about 30 years old, was a resident of Sur Baher, an Arab neighborhood of East Jerusalem that was conquered, then annexed, by Israel after the 1967 war.

The history of the Israel-Palestinian conflict is well-documented, and there’s a time and place for discussing it — God knows the third paragraph of a story about the cold-blooded murder of three innocent women isn’t it. But then the Times doesn’t make much secret of its antipathy towards Israel these days, or of its enthusiasm for “resistance” movements of all stripes.

10 Comments, 10 Threads

1.
deguello

The solution is clear:We must press for a world wide ban on “assault caterpillars”. these dangerous machines have only one purpose:destroying human beings.besides, who needs carbon emitting behemoths,when there are legions of undeemployed who can do the same job as a caterpillar tractor, with a pick and shovel(As long as they have a license,and the tools are registered with th police).

The use of a Caterpillar bulldozer to brutally murder Israelis yesterday puts a crimp in the Palestinian campaign to demonize the company.

The use of the word “bulldozer” in news stories about the use of a front-end loader as a murder weapon also puts a crimp in the credibility of any news agency which so misuses the word.

And how does the demonization of Caterpillar get reduced one iota by this story? Everyone from the New York Times on down harps on the evil Caterpillar company. You’d think that the Kalashnikov company would come in for a share of the demonization, but no. Whether the ‘activist’, or ‘insurgent’, or terrorist or criminal or murderer slays some civilian or other with an AK-47 or a 155mm shell or an entire yard’s contents of construction equipment, the MSM will find a way to make the deed another black mark against capitalism and for the glorious “resistance”.

There are a lot of manufacturers of bulldozing equipment. Why is Caterpillar being singled out? Here’s why:

Union members at Caterpillar, the world’s largest maker of heavy equipment, rejected a contract offer today, in a move that will let them have their old jobs back without gaining anything after a bitter 17-month strike.

Union members rejected the latest company offer as the United Auto Workers’ central bargaining committee voted to send the 8,700 strikers back to work. Union officials would not say why they ended the strike.

I think the company’s in complete control,” said one striker, Jim Schmidt. “We have to accept defeat.” [source]

I knew several union workers at Caterpillar back then [1995]. I was told, in a very matter of fact way, that the union’s leadership was going to communist party meetings for help with the strike. So there is an alliance between the union, the communists, and of course now the Palestinians, who are the ultimate Useful Fools in all this.

You can see why Caterpillar is so reviled by the Left, from the New York Times on down: it stood up to the union, and to the communists, and now to the Palestinians — and won.

In reality, Caterpillar is the quintessential American “can-do” company. As for its tamed union? Pff-f-f-t.

I’m a bit confused by your comment. You appear to think I’m anti-Caterpillar and sympathetic to suicide bombers, which is a complete inversion of my position and the thrust of the article. I think you may have read the opening paragraphs and got the wrong end of the stick. Of course if you understand my position and are disagreeing with it that’s fine, but then your comment doesn’t make any sense.

<<<<<Proud Operator of a 420 CAT. Having seen the video , I can tell that this jihadi had no clue how to run the machine. The real hero is the israeli SOLDIER that climbed on the machine and sent this coward to the big orgy in the sky. BTW , CAT makes the best construction machines in the business and I’m proud to actually wear an official CAT hat too!

Palistinians having common cause with UAW? I guess corrupt organizations have much in common. The Union movement in this country has become an entity much more concerned with the personal power of it’s leadership than the welfare of it’s memberships, JUST LIKE the leadership of the various Palistinian groups. The power of the union is in direct conflict with the individual success of it’s membership, witness the slow death of the US auto industry . . . JUST LIKE the leadership’s of the various Palistinian movements.

Will they want to continue with their campaign if Caterpillar becomes a symbol of Palestinian terror, rather than of Palestinian victimhood?

There are no symbols of Palestinian terror. Not the rockets & missiles lobbed daily from Gaza into Israel, not the nail and ball bearing filled bombs wired into the suicide vests of killers of Israelis, not the sundry weapons constantly supplied to them through the (Rafah) underground passages that (the dupe) Rachel Corrie was trying to protect.

So, no, the bulldozer will forever and always be a tool of Israeli oppression.

And the parents of Rachel Corrie will continie to pursue “justice” against the manufacturer of the bulldozer for the daughter they raised to think and reason like a fool.

And someone, somewhere off Broadway will produce a paean to Rachel known as a “play”. (oh wait, that already happened)